Posts Tagged ‘Australian’

Australia is the best country to do ­business over the internet, the e-Trade Readiness Index shows.

The index, compiled by eBay and The Economist intelligence unit, ranks Group of 20 countries’ internet-enabled trade. Because the European Union is treated as a separate entity, 19 countries are ranked in this particular index and Australia has the highest e-trade ranking out of those 19.

Rounding out the top five are the United States, South Korea, Britain and Japan respectively. The lowest ranked is Argentina.

Australia topped the list because of:

affordable internet access,

high smartphone penetration,

a well- ­developed regulatory framework and

high e-payments adoption.

The index comprises more than 40 indicators across five categories:

investment climate,

internet environment,

international trading environment,

regulatory and legal framework, and

the environment for e-payments.

The categories are weighted based on The Economist intelligence unit’s assumptions of their importance in cross-border trade using the internet.

However, the report also says that customs and regulation restrictions may hinder the growth of small and ­medium-sized businesses.

Australian businesses are living with a sense of security about the safety of their sensitive data that just isn’t true, according to the latest report from McAfee.

The report found 94% of organisations globally think their company is protected against Advanced Evasion Techniques (AET).

AETs are methods of disguising malware so it is able to penetrate business networks undetected by splitting the components of a malware attack into pieces, allowing it to bypass a firewall or IPS appliance. Once it is inside the network, the code reassembles itself and continues its mission of collecting data, destroying networks and exposing company IP.

There are more than 800 million known types of AET and the number is growing.

McAfee APAC CTO, Sean Duca, said businesses need to ensure their security solutions provide visibility into whether the business is protected.

“Australian businesses should expect more from their security provider, and demand more from the technology they already have,” he said. “If their security solutions are not able to detect all types of attacks which disguise themselves and attempt to penetrate the network, or fully visualise the threat landscape, their data is at risk.”

The report, entitled; ‘Security Industry’s Dirty Little Secret,’ surveyed 800 CIOs and security managers from Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Brazil, and South Africa, revealing that 15% of Australian respondents said their company had experienced a breach in the past 12 months, while the global average is 22%.

More than half of global respondents said that AETs posed an immediate and serious threat to their company and 69% said AETs can already exploit known vulnerabilities, while 59% of Australian respondents said AETs can already exploit known vulnerabilities.

Globally, nearly 40% of those breached believe that AETs played a key role in breaches over the past 12 months.

Due to the economic slowdown Australians are becoming more reliant on online business sites, which is just another way for boosting economy and going about increasing their savings. Online business is very successful and offers many benefits, whether it is used to increase the number of sales for a business, to get a business back on track or to start a new business from scratch.

ING Direct executive director Rob Hendriks says “Australians are very creative in boosting their income. We see an increased effort in selling goods online, taking additional jobs, and especially in New South Wales we see a lot of women entering the workforce.”